An electric component-mounted circuit board formed with an electric component such as a resistive element, an inductor, a capacitor or the like by printing on a substrate has been generally used. The electric component comprises electrodes and an electric element such as a resistive element, a dielectric element, or the like. A multilayered circuit board is also generally known, in which an electrically insulating layer and an electrically conductive layer are built up alternately to form multilayered structure. For the circuit boards in these structures, where printing method is used to form the electric components, conventionally, a screen process printing has been commonly adopted. A previously prepared mesh mask is used in the screen process printing. For forming the electric elements, a paste material for forming electric elements, for example, a resistive paste, is applied on the mask and spread by a squeegee. Through the pores of the mask mesh, the paste material sticks to the surface of the circuit board or onto electrodes in a circuit pattern on the surface of the circuit board. If the opening of the pores of the mesh is designed decreased, or if finer mesh is used, a minute printing is done that is intended to reduce the size of the electric element. However, even if the opening of the pores of the mesh can be decreased, decreasing the diameter of the various particles included in the electric element forming paste material is limited. Thus, under the existing circumstances, there is a certain limit for reducing the size of the electric element by the minute printing performed in decreasing the opening of the pores of the mesh. The screen process printing causes irregularity on the surface of the electric element due to the mask mesh. The more the size of the electric element is reduced, the more the roughness of the irregularity affects the electrical characteristic value of the electric element.
An object of the present invention is to provide an electric component-mounted circuit board having a reduced sized electric element than a conventional element and a method of manufacturing same.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an electric component-mounted circuit board which is capable of trimming and has a reduced sized electric element than a conventional element, and a method of manufacturing same.